Rereading Prophecy Revisited - Chapter 7

January 22, 2014 ©Homer Kizer

Rereading Prophecy Revisited

Chapter Seven

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Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!" (Rev 14:12–13)

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In the Endurance, the last 1260 days before the Second Advent, saints—the holy [ton ’agion]—are those persons who keep the commands of God and the faith of Jesus, with the faith of Jesus being His belief of God that produced obedience to God …

It is easy for a Christian to claim that he or she has “faith” when everything goes well for the Christian, but what sort of “faith” does the Christian really have when the person is tested by adversity? Does the Christian really believe God; really trust God with his or her life? The Christian will answer, Yes, of course, but is the Christian faithful in little things, such as keeping the Sabbath? Where is the Christian’s evidence of “trusting” belief? What does the Christian do today to convince God that, indeed, the Christian believes Him, with the Greek word <pisteos> [Strong’s #G4102 and twice used by Paul in Rom 14:23, translated as “faith”] incorporating the concept of “belief” as in entrusting oneself to another? Do Christians collectively believe God enough that they trust Him to supply their needs? Certainly some do, but most do not.

The concept of faithful in little, faithful in much places importance on today’s Christian using the cover of the garment of Christ’s righteousness to practice individual “righteousness” in small things—and this concept is directly related to biblical prophecy through the principle of two being one that will cause the Christian to be a fractal of Christ Jesus, a 20^th-Century expression of Paul saying that disciples were to imitate him as he imitated Jesus, or of John saying that a Christian ought to walk in this world as Jesus walked.

Did Jesus trust the Father to resurrect Him from death and to return to Him the glory He had before the world was created (John 17:5)? Before Jesus called Lazarus forth from death (John chap 11), did Jesus know for certain that resurrection was possible? Certainly Jesus would have known the story of Elijah breathing life back into the son of the widow, and of Elisha twice returning life to a dead person, but how true were these stories? True enough to trust His life to them? Or did Jesus need evidence to augment His faith, His belief of God? For Lazarus wasn’t called forth from death after four days to bolster His disciples’ faith? They still didn’t believe when Jesus was crucified.

When Jesus was taken and He was committed to dying on the cross, Jesus’ faith was based on evidence, not on fanciful hope. When Christians are liberated from indwelling sin and death through being filled-with and empowered by spirit, they will have had set before them sufficient evidence that they are without excuse if they do not believe God. And if they believe God as righteous Abel believed the Lord, why would they cease to believe in less than 220 days? Why did natural Israel at Mount Sinai cease to believe in less than forty days? Natural Israel’s unbelief at Sinai forms a shadow and type of greater Christendom’s unbelief following the Second Passover. And at Sinai, the Lord told Moses, “‘Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book’” (Ex 32:33).

At Sinai, Israel was not permitted repentance. After the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Christians will not be permitted repentance: they will have committed blasphemy against the spirit that filled them.

So why did Israel at Sinai rebel? The why is in the insistence that Aaron make for them an idol—the gold calf—to go before them. It had been their practice in Egypt to worship the idols of Egypt. Even before Israel, seventy in number, went down into Egypt, Rachael worshiped the idols of her father (Gen 31:30–35); so Israel’s worship of the Lord was not pure but was long tainted with idolatry before the Passover liberation under Moses. So in the people insisting that an idol, the god of the people, go before Israel because the people did not know what happened to Moses, Israel did then what greater Christendom will do following the Second Passover.

Back to the question, do Christians today trust God? How about when He doesn’t seem to answer the Christian’s prayer? How about when the Christian is hungry? Or will the Christian in America place greater trust in Food Stamps [Bridge Cards] and Social Services and now, the Affordable Care Act than the Christian places in God? Will the Christian trust God to heal the Christian? Perhaps, but more likely, the Christian won’t. Even when life is at risk, the Christian will pray to God then take him or herself to the Emergency Room, not that the Christian who desires to physically live ought not to seek help from medical professionals. But from where does a desire to live physically come? Does this desire not come from the flesh? Does not prayer augmented by surgery, by radiation, by chemotherapy, by daily taking drugs minimize the Christian’s trust of God, and actually reveal the Christian’s distrust? For far too many Christians in America, the daily constitutes counting out pills that will be taken that day.

In chapter six, I didn’t address the message of the third angel:

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of His anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name." (Rev 14:9–11)

Because taking the mark of the beast (chi xi stigma — from Rev 13:18) in John’s vision is thematically placed next to—and in opposition to—keeping the Commandments, Sabbatarian Christendom has, for a couple of centuries, held that the mark of the beast was Sunday worship, thereby making the Roman Church the beast. This, however, is not the case. Taking the mark of the beast so that the holy person can, in the Endurance, engage in transactions signifies that the person—when the Kingdom has been taken by God and delivered to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18)—is not a son of the King; is not of God, Father and Son. For what is it that Jesus said,

When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax went up to Peter and said, "Does your teacher not pay the tax?" He said, "Yes." And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?" And when he said, "From others," Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself." (Matt 17:24–27)

This passage will again be cited for it has not been read as it should have been.

The mark of the beast [from Rev 13:18] is the mark of Death, the tattoo of the cross, chi xi stigma. Every person in this present world is marked for death without being outwardly “marked” because the person has indwelling sin and death through being humanly born consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) by being a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3). But liberation of first all Christians at the Second Passover from indwelling sin and death through being filled with spirit while the Adversary remains the prince of this world, thereby separating circumcised-of-heart Israel from uncircumcised neighbors, will cause Christians to be marked from having the Law written on hearts and placed in minds. The outward manifestation of this marking will be Sabbath observance, with marking denoting difference: by being filled with spirit, the Christian differs from his or her neighbors. But when a marked Christian takes sin back inside the Christian, the Christian will cease being marked and will have committed blasphemy against the spirit. The Christian now is without forgiveness, for God will send over the Christian a strong delusion that will prevent the Christian from repenting through the Christian sincerely believing that what he or she does in “right” and “good” before God.

Halfway through the seven endtime years, dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man. Now, those who are to be consigned to the lake of fire will be “marked” with the tattoo of the cross; for they differ from everyone else who has been filled-with and empowered by spirit through the world being baptized in holy spirit (Joel 2:28) and thereby liberated from indwelling sin and death … what happens to Christian in the Affliction happens to the third part of humanity in the Endurance when this third part will become sons of the King.

The Endurance will divide humanity into sons of the King and others, all marked for death. But sons of the King are free: it is not necessary for them to engage in transactions so that toll or tax can be paid. Others are not free: it is necessary for them to engage in commerce so that they can pay toll or tax.

Today, the Adversary reigns as prince of this world; therefore, his sons as pastors and priests in this world are free from having to engage in commerce. It is his sons who stand in pulpits and collect tithes and offerings from their parishioners. But when dominion is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, it is sons of God who will be free to take from nature their sustenance, thus eliminating the need for them to engage in any transactional economy.

Again, when dominion is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, the “king” of this world will no longer be the Adversary. His sons as miry clay clinging to iron toes will be transformed into “others” who will have to engage in transactions and therefore take upon themselves the mark of death, the tattoo of the cross. The third angel’s message is specifically to them and to those who would continue to follow them.

In the latter days of the Affliction, hundreds of millions of Muslims [plus others] will have recently converted to Arian Christendom thanks to work done by the man of perdition and the demonic false prophet. These new converts will have abandoned their former ways before dominion is given to the Son of Man; thus, they are as primed metal, ready for paint—and they will be painted with righteousness when they are filled with spirit through the world being baptized in spirit.

The sons that are of the then reigning Son of Man are free—

They are not free to take from their brothers their substance, but they are free to take from nature those things they need, things that the King will provide to them because they are His sons. Therefore, no son of the King will have to engage in commerce to supply basic needs. None will anyone have to take upon him or herself the mark of the beast, the mark of Death. A distinction between who is a son of the King and who is “other” will be made by those who are “other” marking themselves for death in the lake of fire, but not before they experience the wrath of God to the end of this present age.

And who are the sons of the King? Those human persons who keep the Commandments and their trust in Jesus, their trust being His trust of God, His Father and our Father.

Now back to what I was beginning to write: If a Christian doesn’t have absolute faith that God will heal the Christian—faith of the sort that will have the Christian willing to die if not healed—the person needs to seek help from medical professionals. And if the Christian has faith of the sort that permits the Christian to die without second guessing him or herself, then there is no reason for the person to die. Death—the fourth beast and the fourth horseman—has lost its power over the Christian. And God knows what the Christian will do when faced with death: the Christian will continue to keep the Commandments because the Christian believes God to the extent that the Christian truly trusts God with the Christian’s life.

There are lawless Christians who also believe what they hold to be true to the extent that they will die for what they believe …

For the Muslim jihadist, death has lost it sting: Islamist suicide bombers in theory fear death less than they desire to see the face of Allah. In practice, this is not necessarily so, and will be seen as not true following the Second Passover liberation of Israel when there is mass conversion of Muslims to Unitarian/Arian Christian sects (there will be little or no conversion to Trinitarian sects).

In practice lawless Christendom will, in their prayers when confronting death, promise God that they will do whatever He requires of them, but when danger passes, they will mostly return to their lawless ways.

It is said there are no Atheists in foxholes, but when Christians climb out of foxholes, few become Sabbatarian Believers. Most are content to return to whatever belief they previously held … I knew one, Elder Stambaugh (spelling uncertain), pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist congregation in Oceanlake [now Lincoln City], Oregon, in the late 1950s, early 1960s, who didn’t return to his lawless ways.

Stambaugh was a bush pilot in Alaska when he walked away from his fourth plane crash, this one in the mud of Turnagain Flats, with the tide incoming so that he couldn’t walk to shore a half mile away [the mud turns to quicksand on the incoming tide]. He climbed onto the tail of his plane and waited and watched as rescuers on shore waited for the incoming tide to reach them so that they could come get him in a boat (this was before statehood). He tried to figure whether the incoming tide would reach him before it reached the shore, and he concluded that it would, that he would be swept into the bore tide and drowned in the muddy water. The tail of his plane on which he was perched was lower than the shoreline. And he promised God that if he got to shore that he would devote the remainder of his life to serving God, a promise he kept, unlike the soldier in Hemingway’s short story. And because to me, then a twelve year old high school freshman when I met and got to know him, Elder Stambaugh represented a real man—and because I wanted to prove my Seventh Day Adventist stepfather wrong about Sabbath observance—I entered into serious Bible study for a few months before concluding that, indeed, if a person was to be a Christian, the person was under obligation to keep the Sabbath.

The New Testament cannot be honestly read in any other way; for when the Law moves from hand to heart, from body to mind, the Sabbath doesn’t move to the 8^th day but moves from regulating the flesh to regulating the inner self, the soul, made alive through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou].

Elder Stambaugh insisted that the water around the tail of his plane—water that had reached his feet—quit rising when the incoming tide was still fifty yards from the shore, that the water stayed where it was as the tide reached the shore, that the water stayed where it was as a skiff was launched, that the water stayed where it was as the skiff bucked into and through the incoming bore tide, that the water stayed where it was, just touching his feet, until the skiff reached him and he was safely aboard. Then the tide immediately engulfed and swallowed his plane.

I obviously wasn’t there to witness what he said happened, but in going from a bush pilot to a poorly paid pastor, his life was his testimony that what he claimed as true was true.

In the Affliction, engaging in transactions does not mean rebellion against God; for the Adversary remains the prince of this world. In the Endurance, engaging in transactions will mean for previous Unbelievers that they take upon themselves the mark of Death when the fangs of the Adversary have been or shortly will be pulled … who fears a toothless lion? His roar will still frighten, but he hasn’t much more than his roar.

The prophet Amos wrote,

Hear this word that [YHWH] has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:

You only have I known

of all the families of the earth;

therefore I will punish you

for all your iniquities.

Do two walk together,

unless they have agreed to meet?

Does a lion roar in the forest,

when he has no prey?

Does a young lion cry out from his den,

if he has taken nothing?

Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth,

when there is no trap for it?

Does a snare spring up from the ground,

when it has taken nothing?

Is a trumpet blown in a city,

and the people are not afraid?

Does disaster come to a city,

unless [YHWH] has done it?

For the Lord [YHWH] does nothing

without revealing His secret

to His servants the prophets.

The lion has roared;

who will not fear?

The Lord [YHWH] has spoken;

who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:1–8)

Amos was sent to the natural House of Israel, but here he spoke to all of natural Israel, not to merely the northern kingdom of Samaria. And what he spoke is the left-hand half of a chiral prophecy that also pertains to the circumcised-of-heart nation of Israel.

As an aside, perhaps the most idiotic concept advanced by greater Christendom is avoidance of so-called replacement theology, this avoidance preventing Christians from being able to read any Hebrew styled narrative … to avoid reading a Hebrew narrative as it was written to be read is as theologically negligent as the drug manufacturer Chemie Grünenthal was legally and morally negligent in October 1957 when it first marketed the trade-named drug Contergan, Thalidomite, which became an over-the-counter drug in Germany on October 1^st of that year. Drug chirality was then known, but chirality’s effects were not appreciated and were ignored. The result was the birth of approximately 10,000 malformed children, of which half survived. The results of greater Christendom ignoring the chirality of Hebrew narratives will be the spiritual death of half or more of greater Christendom.

The essence of Amos’ prophecy is that nothing happens in isolation, that time and chance has boundaries for Israel, boundaries set by the Lord/God, who does nothing in secret but reveals His secret things to His prophets who can no more resist speaking than a person can resist feeling feel when a nearby lion roars … when the Second Passover occurs and all of Christendom is filled with spirit, will not Christians feel fear? But in love, there is no fear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18).

Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, most Christians, having lost an uncovered firstborn, will be afraid; will be terrified; will not understand what has happened; will be spiritually as German mothers were physically when their children were born without limbs or with only stumps for limbs.

So the question must be rephrased: following the Second Passover who will most fear God, Christians or non-Christians? Who will know what has happened? Who will believe that God would take the lives of innocents simply because they had not taken the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed? Who will believe that all unredeemed firstborns belong to God for Him to do with them as He pleases, including giving their lives as ransom for the freedom of spiritual Israel, today enslaved by the Adversary through the indwelling of sin and death?

Will not Christians and non-Christians tremble at the prospect of additional deaths from seemingly unexplainable causes. Indeed, they will. But what happens when a person feels fear day after day? What happened when America lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War years? Did life not go on as if the threat of nuclear war was not a real threat? Did America not go into denial, even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when nuclear holocaust was a burp away? I was a high school senior on the Oregon Coast in October 1962, when the Columbus Day Storm took the roof off the high school: every place the wind made a bend, the wind dumped a million boardfeet of timber. The wind torn down barns and uprooted orchards, and generally brought commerce to a halt. Then two days later, with school still out because of storm damage, U-2 overflight photos of Cuba confirmed the presence of missiles that would reach all of the continental United States except the devastated Pacific Northwest.

Living with fear produces psychological denial.

Indeed, does the person who daily feels fear not go into denial, the person telling him or herself that there is nothing to fear, no reason to be afraid? Does the Christian who lives with indwelling death not tell him or herself that God will accept the person just the way the person is? The Christian knows that he or she will die, and intellectually knows that what the Christian believes as true is a lie. The Christian tells him or herself that generations of Christians cannot have gotten Christianity so terribly wrong that the Christian, now filled with spirit and knowing the Lord, has to live like a Judean. But the Christian will also tell him or herself that the Second Passover liberation of Israel was not supposed to occur—and because it occurred, everything the Christian has always believed must be rethought. Scripture must be reread. Prophecy must be reread. And that is what will happen.

But the lawless one, the man of perdition, bitter at the loss of daughters and son and grandson, will be possessed by the Adversary and will tell Christians that they have to return to the foundational principles of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, and that they must take these self-evident and unalienable principles to all peoples everywhere.

Leaderless and rudderless but filled with spirit, greater Christendom will seek meaning and purpose—the call for a crusade against perceived unrighteousness and ungodliness here and abroad will serve to distract Christians and cause them to forget about their past lawlessness. Hence, greater Christendom will rebel against God and will be condemned to the lake of fire, but will manage to “covert” the world to one-god ideology.

As with Israel at Sinai where the nation’s past idolatry prevented Israel from truly believing the Lord, post Second Passover Christendom’s past idolatry, past lawlessness will prevent Christians from truly believing God to the extent that they trust God. Their trust will be in what they can then do to take Christ to the world with force of arms, even to Christian fighting against Christian, martyring fellow Christians as Cain killed righteous Abel.

But the third part of humanity in the Endurance has no tradition of Sunday worship, of observing Christmas and Easter, of claiming grace as unmerited pardon of transgressions, now and forever. Thus, this third part will come to Christ filled with spirit and knowing the Lord and desiring to obey the Lord. This third part will want to keep the Commandments for their “faith” will not be a vain hope; will not be their assurance of things desired, but will be based on evidence, the reality of the Second Passover and the Second Woe and heavenly signs revealing that the world has indeed been baptized in spirit. They will come to God truly fearing God for cause.

And faith based on evidence is what I have, what Elder Stambaugh had … as an aside, my youngest brother Ken [Doctor Kenneth W. Kizer] attended the Seventh Day Adventist school at Oceanlake for two years; so he will have known Elder Stambaugh, and will have known him better than I knew him.

For the third part of humanity at the beginning of the Endurance, faith/belief will come via fearing the God of whom they have seen evidence of His existence. This third part will spiritually be as Job was physically—and as Job was perfect in all of his ways out of fear of God, this third part will be perfect out of fear. And as Job had to move beyond his understanding of God and start to obey God out of trust and love for God, the third part will have to move beyond fear of God and arrive at trust and all that “trust” entails. It is partially for this reason that the Adversary will be employed by God to prevent holy ones from buying and selling (engaging in transactions) during the Endurance; for when a person cannot enter into a transaction to obtain food and shelter, the person must trust God to supply the person with basic needs. A day spent trusting God to supply the person’s physical needs will become a week, then a month, a year, a second year, a third year, and trusting God has become the person’s habit. The person “knows” that God will provide for the person; the person trusts God with the person’s life, with this trust not diminishing ever.

The person as a son of the King is free, and again, as a son of the King, the person doesn’t pay toll or tax but goes where he will and when he will as he wants. The person is free not to engage in transactions, and the Adversary guarantees this freedom by not permitting anyone without the mark of Death to buy or sell.

Physically, a person is to toil six days a week and rest on the seventh day, the Sabbath. The Millennium forms the transitional model of heaven; thus, the Millennium represents the physical/spiritual hybrid of the seventh day, when those who are of God do no mundane work as is done today. The Millennium is when sons of God do not engage in commerce, but live under their own vine and tree. The Millennium isn’t about putting figurative frosting on the cake that is this world.

What the man of perdition will fail to understand is that he actually opposes God by clinging to human philosophies of the past. He will not grasp that what he is about is forging the world into a form of American constitutionalism when God is about destroying the world as it is in all of its forms and starting over again with a new way to organize society, a way based upon manifestation of love for neighbor and brother.

Americans in particular tend to believe that advanced societies are organized along Utilitarian principles. Consider the Declaration of Liberty:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. …

The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God—who is the God of “nature,” of natural things? To whom has this present world been given? Who is the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air? Is not this prince the Adversary from whom dominion will be taken when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man? Indeed, it is. Nature’s God isn’t the Creator, as most Americans have assumed. Rather, Nature’s God is the one who rules Nature and whom Nature worships. So consider, now, what the prophet Isaiah wrote,

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the [ruwach — breath] of [YHWH] shall rest upon him, the [breath] of wisdom and understanding, the [breath] of counsel and might, the [breath] of knowledge and the fear of [YHWH]. And his delight shall be in the fear of [YHWH]. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of [YHWH] as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. (Isa 11:1–11)

Nature’s God is not the Lord, but is the one who reigns before the animal natures of the great predators are changed. Nature’s God will have the wolf devouring the lamb; will have the lion eat the ox; will have the cobra strike dead the nursing child. It will be these natures that are changed when the Lord extends His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people. So Nature’s God today is the god of deadly predators, the god of the predatory bear that hunts down and kills moose calves, the god of all who hurt and harm others, the god who conceals knowledge of the Lord … Paul wrote, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). It is the unrighteous and the ungodly who suppress knowledge of God. And the ultimate suppressor of truth, of knowledge of God, is the Adversary, the present prince of this world, Nature’s God.

And where is the origins for the clause, the pursuit of Happiness, to be found? Or the origin for the clause, to effect their Safety and Happiness? Nietzsche wrote, "Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that." Only the Englishman and the American of Anglo descent.

Perhaps no other expression so dramatically effected 20^th-Century America than the pursuit of Happiness: social safety-net, social welfare programs have a curious way of using the pursuit of happiness as justification for their creation and continued existence—and all of this relates to the principle that the ends justify the means. Therefore if a program or an administrative decision is for the public good, the program or decision justifies itself: private property can be taken from a person, either through taxation or eminent domain. A person’s life can be taken if the loss of life is for the public good, or the public’s happiness as in abortion. Regardless of whether the reason for taking a life is because a crime has been committed or for the harvest of the person’s organs, society in the pursuit of collective happiness is justified in taking the person’s life, a reality seen in China executing minor criminals and then selling their organs to people in need of an organ transplant.

If any societal act is deemed for the public good such as forcing a person to work on the Sabbath, what was done to members of the Snow Hill Community, the governing entity is justified in its actions—and justified in the phrase, the pursuit of Happiness …

The pursuit of Happiness as a co-equal right with Life and Liberty is the product of philosophical Utilitarianism, a child of English Enlightenment and a response to then emerging industrialism, self-determinism, democratic governance, and rebellion against tyrannical sovereigns, secular or theological. The principle of utility undergirds the pursuit of Happiness. Jeremy Bentham (1742–1832) is credited with the origin of utilitarian thought: he argued that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain were the two masters ruling human conduct; he reasoned that human persons resolve ethical questions by maximizing pleasure while minimizing pain. And to Bentham, happiness and pleasure had the same meaning.

Bentham wasn’t the first to emphasize happiness: both Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethical theories as well as Thomas Aquinas’ natural law were based on an inherent human desire for happiness. However, utilitarian thought insists that only consequences matter; that any ethical standard must be based on how a person’s conduct affected others. Therefore, a man lying with another man as he would with a woman does not adversely affect the heterosexual man and his wife and is therefore ethical behavior regardless of what God or Moses or anyone else says … the widespread application of utilitarianism within a society is the pinnacle of rebellion against God.

America’s Declaration of Independence documents our founders’ rebellion against God under the banner of Utilitarianism.

In the pursuit of Happiness, what philosophically makes conduct ethically wrong is not prohibition by a deity or by a sovereign of such conduct, as in the Lord through Moses declaring,

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion. (Lev 18:22–23)

but the effects of the conduct upon others. And the juxtaposition between homosexuality and bestiality to which gay activists have recently protested was initially made by Moses as he recorded what the Lord told him; thus, the protest of these activists is against Moses.

Bentham devised a mathematical metaphor (later dubbed, the Greatest Happiness Factor — GHF) to determine ethically good conduct that expands individual as well as communal Liberty; hence, Bentham linked Liberty to Happiness using pseudo-math, thereby avoiding strict hedonism that has no concern for anyone other than the self and substituting for strict hedonism hedonistic utilitarianism that supposedly maximized communal happiness and minimized communal pain.

John Stuart Mills (1806–1873) as a student of Bentham refined Happiness by rejecting Bentham’s perception that all pleasure differed only in quantity, not in quality. Mills, in On Liberty, advanced the concept that a pleasuring agent could be of a high order or of a low order, a concept post-modern grammar instructors have adapted to the construction of prose. Mills held that there was no qualitative value in the pleasure a sadomasochist experiences while whipping a victim. Mills held that the love a husband holds for his wife does not have less qualitative value if he derives less pleasure from her following her double mastectomy. Mills held that the pleasure a person mentally experiences while dreaming of athletic successes, sexual experience, receiving critical acclaim does not qualitatively differ from pleasure actually experienced when achieving such successes even though the dreamt pleasure is experience-deficient because the pleasure comes from being delusional (consider the movie, Matrix).

As an aside, I occasionally reference concepts and ideologies found within the Bible but that are more easily seen or explained in outside source material. Unfortunately, too many Sabbatarian Christians have read nothing but Scripture for multiple decades and as a result are unable to quickly access the referents used. This is a fault that Herbert Armstrong, in particular, encouraged: his disciples had no basis for reading Scripture in any manner except as Armstrong, himself, read Scripture; therefore, his disciples had no real means for escaping theological fossilization. They became mired in thick mud that has or will swallow them … on the Turnagain mud flats, a falling tide leaves the mud saturated in water and semi-solid in structure so a person can walk on the flats, but a rising tide pulls water from the mud, thereby changing the structure of the mud by removing its semi-solid base, thus turning the mud into what is essentially quicksand. This is something I know, something most every Alaskan knows (same thing pertains to broad, braided channel mud of Interior rivers), but this isn’t necessarily common knowledge in the Lower Forty-Eight. Likewise, when I reference a short story by Hemingway about a trench soldier whose promises to God were meaningless after the day’s shelling was over, I do so because Hemingway compressed “natural” human behavior into a few lines, behavior to which Christians will return between the opening of the fifth Seal and the opening of the sixth Seal—and I don’t here give the reference passage for the fifth and sixth Seals for you ought to know them.

If I make a mistake and assume you know more or less than you do, especially concerning Jefferson’s use and modification of the clause, the pursuit of Pleasure/Happiness, when he almost singlehandedly drafted the Declaration of Independence, forgive me … when teaching at Paducah Community College (ca 2001), I laid out the plot structure for the movie Matrix on the chalkboard for the class. I was running a little late, so the next class was waiting outside to come in when I dismissed. And the instructor for the next class, a drama professor, looked at what I had written on the board as I began to erase it, and He said, So that’s what that movie is about. He understood the movie as soon as he saw its plotting outlined, but he hadn’t understood it before: he had missed the cultural significance of being the chosen one. And so it will be for some readers of Scripture, and it will take some longer than it will take others to understand chirality and the polarized light necessary for chirality to be seen. This I cannot help … if you have been reading what I have been writing for years and still don’t grasp the difference between dead water [still water, a pond or lake] and living water [moving water, a stream or river], I don’t really know how I can help you. The difference between dead and living water should have been realized in grade school through exposure to the maxim, a rolling stone gathers no moss. A “rolling stone” is a living stone and as such differs from a “dead stone” or motionless stone on which moss grows, with this being a realization of young children (at least when I was in school).

If, however, such links do not seem to come “naturally” to the reader, there might well be another problem in play, that of continuing to assign importance to those things that have been created rather than to the Creator. In the concept of faithful in little, faithful in much is imbedded the two are one principle: if a person is faithful when it comes to seemingly insignificant matters, such as tithing, the person will be faithful in significant matters such as exercising the spirit of God to move mountains. The first reveals the second, with the first and the second being fractals of a single image, the person’s faithfulness. And in an example I have been reluctant to introduce because of its self-serving nature, the person who legitimately claims that he or she cannot afford to pay tithes or give offerings has financial problems because the person’s priorities are on things physical rather than on things spiritual … one of the things Herbert Armstrong had correct was the importance of tithing although he didn’t really understand the concept. But by a Believer paying a tithe, especially when it hurts to do so, the Believer tells God that He, God, is more important to the Believer than are the person’s fiscal obligations. And because this person has put God first in his or her life, God pays attention to this person. The person becomes foreknown by God, thereby setting into play what will ultimately result in God sending to the person the Parakletos, the spirit of truth. The history of Israel, physical and spiritual, discloses that God isn’t much interested in the person who has one toe in the kingdom and the other nine in this world, a differing way to say that the person is spiritually lukewarm. It is in the fully committed person that the mind of Christ develops and begins to think the thoughts of Christ.

Admittedly, tithing and giving offerings can seem not to make sense when paychecks don’t reach the end of the month, but until a person surrenders to God, the person will not experience the liberty of being a son of the heavenly King. All the person will experience is the wrath of the Adversary who has the ability—to the extent that God permits—to make things difficult for the alleged Believer. Therefore, the greater the financial problems of the alleged Believer, the greater the need for the Believer to begin tithing, with the tithe belonging to God as all firstborns belong to God.

So there is no misunderstanding, in a seven year cycle, the tithe of a person’s increase—not gross income—on the first and second, fourth and fifth years are paid to the temple, with the temple today being where the Body of Christ is. On the third and sixth years, the tithe is held locally to support widows and orphans and the local Levite who had no inheritance in the land. On the seventh year, Israel as sons of the King does no harvesting so no increase will occur and no tithe will be paid. And there is only one tithe, of which a tenth as a second tithe will be returned to the tithe payer by the priests so that the Israelite can eat at Feasts, meaning that on the third and sixth years, the tithe becomes the “third tithe” for it is not given to the temple but is held locally and the tithe payer has to cover his or her own expenses at Feasts. Again, paying one tithe [10% of the person’s increase] which represents both the first and second tithe becomes a matter, like keeping the Sabbath, of being faithful in little. And the endtime adaption of ancient Israel’s agrarian tithing gives to the one who would pay the tithe discretion on how handle the tithe, with the understanding that it matters to God whether the person is faithful in little. It really doesn’t matter to me; for God has repeatedly demonstrated that He will supply my needs, sometimes through others, sometimes through sale of the production of my hands.

Enough said: tithing actually works whenever the tithe is given to the person or organization the tithe payer believes is doing the work of God. Heavenly rewards, though, only come when tithes and offerings are left with those who are doing a work for God.

The definition of faith found in Hebrews 11:1 changes when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. Instead of faith being the assurance of things hoped-for as it is now for the vast majority of Christians, in the Endurance faith/belief will come via demonstrated evidence that God will provide what the person cannot supply for him or herself. And when faith is based on evidence, the bar for obedience is set high.

Do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet, the rhetorical question Amos asked … in the Endurance, the third part of humankind will walk in this world as Jesus walked, and what transaction did Jesus ever engage-in?

Again, for pedagogical reasons, the earlier cite:

When—not whether or if—it is no longer necessary for sons of God to engage in transactions to take from this earth those things needed to sustain lives, these sons are truly free. And they are free because their Father and His Firstborn Son rule in the Endurance. They do not presently rule over the single kingdom of this world—“Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever’” (Rev 11:15)—but rule when dominion is taken from the Adversary and his angels on the doubled day 1260 halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation. Then, there will be absolutely no need for the third part of humanity to take upon themselves the mark of Death, the tattoo of the cross. Only doubters, unbelievers, will take upon themselves the mark of the fourth beast, his image and likeness. Sons of the Kings will not do so, unless of course these sons reject adoption.

Zechariah says of this third part,

They will call upon my name,

and I will answer them.

I will say, “They are my people”;

and they will say, “[YHWH] is my God.” (Zech 13:9)

The third part will be truly free from having to pay toll or tax, euphemisms for engaging in transactions. But in the Endurance, they will not be able to belly bump with the Adversary so while free, they will have to exercise their freedom with wisdom, something the Sabbatarian Churches of God have sadly lacked.

Permit me to again digress and return to a seemingly abandoned subject: what is wrong with homosexually is its physical anticipation of the genderless state of inner selves and outer selves after the Bridegroom marries His Bride, with the Bridegroom being the last Adam as well the life-giving Eve spirit. Thus, homosexuality is of a debased mind that initially worshiped the creation rather than the Creator, Paul’s declaration (Rom chap 1). And the same applies in worshiping the Son on the day of the sun: it is mock spiritual worship. It is actually worship of the creature [the created] rather than the Creator. And whether greater Christendom wants to admit the reality, homosexuality is the physical counterpart to the spiritual practice of worshiping the Son on the day of the sun, or on the birthday of the sun — the winter solstice has traditionally been celebrated as the birthday of the sun, with the date for the winter solstice when Moses led Israel out from Egypt being December 25^th, Christmas.

In Sir Thomas More’s Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (1532/33 CE), More makes a reasonable case for the Catholic Church holding preeminence over Christ due to the Church preexisting Christ’s birth; therefore, the teachings of Christ cannot be used to refute or change Catholic dogma. Luther and Tyndale held, according to More, an inverted concept of ecclesiastical authority for the Catholic Church by its antiquity was the safeguard of civilization against tyranny and error … how can the Catholic Church preexist Christ? It does through its teaching of the ancient mysteries, or so More seemed to believe.

All worship of the creature/created rather than the Creator is directly or indirectly worship of the Adversary, a created guardian cherub in whom rebellion was discovered. Homosexuality is elevation of physical gender to god-like status. The man who lays with another man as he would lay with a woman worships the male gender: the man either wants to surrender his masculinity to another man, thereby submitting himself to another created being [to the creature], or he wants to use his masculinity to dominate another man, often a particular man for whom he has emotional attachment. This elevation of the penis materializes in cultural phallic symbols, with the Washington Monument being perhaps the most grievous secular example seen in America, but with church spires being the most commonly seen examples.

Because the third part of humanity never held the teachings of any form of Christendom in high esteem, this third part in the Endurance will be difficult for the Adversary to deceive … what is a Muslim’s reaction to the cross today? Islamists slaughter Christians. So how will an Islamist respond to the Adversary when he demands that the now-former Islamist take upon him or herself the tattoo of the cross, the mark of the beast [chi xi stigma], the mark of Death, the fourth horseman and fourth beast/king? The former Islamist, filled with spirit and knowing the Lord, simply won’t go there. To an unreasonable degree (considering whom Islamists today worship), Islam and Islamists trust Allah to provide, with this “trust” being transferred to the Son of Man when dominion over the kingdom of this world is taken by the Father and the Son. Thus, because Muslims have been ideologically prepared to elevate law over emotions and to trust God to provide, few then-former Muslims will join with the Adversary when he is cast to earth and comes claiming to be the Messiah. Most will have converted to Arian Christendom in the Affliction as the transitional step between their present theology and what they will believe when the spirit is poured out on all the world. And far more of today’s Muslims will enter the kingdom as firstfruits that will enter from greater Christendom. Again, the last shall be first.

Did the angel Gabriel really come to Mohammad? Because of what will happen in the Endurance, perhaps he did. But every Muslim is today far from God despite what each believes. Nevertheless, Islam can be likened to a field laying fallow, self-seeded with wild barley, waiting to be put into production with a harvest coming from this field when the sickle is taken to it.

Greater Christendom is a field of tares, false grain that looks like wheat when growing but which produces no useable seed and is fit only for fueling flames.

God, Father and Son, will do nothing without revealing the matter to their servants, the prophets—and a sealed and kept secret prophecy is of no value to either God, who knows the matter, or to friends of Christ Jesus, who need to know the matter. Therefore, faith is tested when a prophecy is unsealed, reread or read again with differing meanings [linguistic objects] being assigned to words [linguistic icons] delivered long ago.

Was Luther, as More contended, an enemy of civilization? Are black chessmen a threat to white chessmen? Certainly they are. But both white and black chessmen are pieces on a game board, with the Adversary controlling the game, playing both sides, pitting yellow [gold and bronze] against white [silver and iron]. The only way the Elect can truly escape from the Adversary, the reality of Moses escaping from Pharaoh, is in death until the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. Then the game table is overturned: moneychangers and livestock merchants and all who engage in transactions will be driven from the temple, for the Adversary himself will be cast from heaven and cast into space-time from which he can never escape.

What is biblical prophecy ultimately about? The endtime movement from physical to spiritual that reveals the spiritual wickedness [wicked spirits] that are presently engaged in war against each other, thereby making the viability of self-rule, self-governance a lie of the Adversary. Those Americans who want to stuff the Federal government back inside the bag sewn for it by the Constitution are engaged in a noble goal, but a goal that is an affront to God. All self-rule is rejection of God; is rebellion against God; and is ultimately doomed to failure because it is not of God. Does this mean that Christians are not to participate in TEA Party or Patriots In Action groups? Yes, it does; for the Christian’s citizenship isn’t in this world but in heaven. The Christian is [should be] an alien in an alien land, a sojourner as Abraham was a sojourner in the land of the Hittites and Amorites. And aliens, even resident aliens, have no rights of citizenship that would permit them to engage in the self-governance of the land. Christians have no rights of citizenship that would permit them to vote in elections, unless, of course, they renounce their citizenship in heaven.

The fleshly outer self of a Christian remains in this world and remains a citizen of where the flesh resides, but the living spiritual inner self is not of this world and has no citizenship in this world but is a citizen of heaven. The fleshly outer self of a Christian remains male or female, Jew or Greek, bond or free after baptism into Christ, but the living inner self is neither male nor female. So does the Christian worship the creature/created or the Creator when the Christian claims citizenship where the fleshly outer self resides?

The Christian who participates in this world’s governance worships the flesh and those things created.

In an analogy greater Christendom can temporarily ignore, the Christian who votes in this world’s elections is as the man who lays with another man: the importance of the flesh overrules all else.

In another analogy that greater Christendom will ignore to its peril, American pastors who join with other pastors—the figurative black robe brigade—in attempting to return America to its constitutional roots (that is to the guarantee of unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) are black rooks, knights, bishops, queen and king on the Adversary’s chessboard, whereas American progressives who advance the cause for social justice and equality for all are white pawns manipulated by the Adversary, with President Obama being a passed pawn on the seventh rank, with promotion one move away, this one move an executive order putting into place marshal law nationwide. To stop the President many black pieces will have to be sacrificed; for the eighth rank of the file on which the President marches is heavily guarded. So many black pieces will have to be sacrificed that black is left without pieces with which to defend its king, the future man of perdition. Thus this king will hide in an advancing fortress of pawns, the king preceding the pawns, protecting them, his steps well timed, the course of the game a potential stalemate until help arrives from off the board.

Paul’s “man of lawless, the son of destruction” (2 Thess 2:3); Daniel’s “abomination that makes desolate” (Dan 11:31); Jesus’ “abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel” (Matt 24:15)—all are the same Arian Christian who on day 220 of the Affliction becomes to spiritual Israel what King Saul was to ancient Israel. This man of perdition will be in the temple [the Church] through being the public face of a modern black robe brigade. He will actually have to be persuaded by others to take to himself the authority he has long coveted: he will declare himself God without seeming to lie to himself for he will become sincerely convinced that the angel inside him, the angel that has recently entered him, is Christ Jesus whereas he has in reality become possessed by the Adversary.

This man of perdition doesn’t have to break into the temple for as a Christian he will already be in the temple when all Christians are filled with spirit. It will be the two witnesses that seemingly have to break into the temple.

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